What Non-New Films Have You Seen? (2021 Edition)

[sevendaughters]

just watched The Wizard of Oz for work. obviously you know it. still has a magic for me. that said the munchkin coroner implies quite the darkness in Munchkinland doesn't it? lot of mysterious deaths need to be confirmed is it? blaming the witch eh?

[Egyptian Feast]

The Cloth (2013)

Danny Trejo (Machete, Breaking Bad and Eric Roberts (The Dark Knight) star in this terrifying story of The Cloth, a covert team of exorcists who are charged by the Catholic Church to battle a spiraling epidemic of demonic possession.

No production logo. Opens on upskirt shot of possessed girl writhing on a bed, being doused with holy water and chanted at by our leading man Danny Trejo, who we are hopefully soon going to see kicking the shit out of demons for the Pope. At the moment he's not doing too well though. He's taking quite a battering and seems to actually be making the situation worse, as the young lady is increasingly looking very Linda Blair and contorting herself into weird shapes. Danny's assistant shoots her with a weird CGI crucifix gun which makes her explode then goes over to check on Danny, who is fucking dead.

Opening titles. Lots of actors named, including Eric Roberts quite far down the list, but not Danny Trejo. Technical credits follow. Obviously no Danny there. 'Written And Directed by Justin Price'. A few seconds pass. 'With Danny Trejo'. You actually get about five seconds more of him later, so they're technically correct.

We meet Wisecrack Prick (Kyler Willett), a young man so magnetic women just come up to him in bars and ask if he has any friends and when he says 'No' they immediately want to have sex with him. He's so appealing that, despite being godless, the Catholic Church are hot for him to be a champion for their 'covert team of exorcists' for reasons inadequately (or uninterestingly) explained. He is a massive cunt and I hate him immediately. He is also the actual star of the movie.

Wisecrack Prick gets a snazzy uniform (pic doesn't do it justice), a love interest and a sarky English guy who makes all the CGI weapons. These weapons are what truly makes this film stand out from all others, for according to imdb trivia almost certainly left by Justin Price or his creative partner Khu:

No other film has had transforming weapons and this is a trademark of The Cloth franchise.

'Transforming weapons' are guns and grenades made from pure CGI which turn people possessed by demons into exploding shards of CGI. The Cloth don't really go to the bother of exorcising people because, as we discovered in the pre-credits sequence, it is a massive pain in the arse.

People criticise the films of George Lucas for being over-reliant on CGI, but he is a master of restraint compared to Price, who has the subtle touch of The Day Today graphics department. In the best scene, Khu, who plays the main baddie until it turns out he wasn't, confronts a priest at confession. As he intimidates his victim, he does that trick where you pass a coin back and forth over your fingers except using an oversized disc of CGI, probably because Khu is so useless he couldn't do the trick. The priest vomits a torrent of CGI coins, Khu does that 'strolling away from an explosion' pose and drops a CGI blood covered CGI coin into a font.

The direction is pitifully incoherent and large chunks of story are missing (imdb lists the runtime as 101 minutes, the version I watched was 85 with the lengthy opening credits repeated at the end). The bits that are supposed to be funny fall completely flat but everything that is meant to be cool is hilarious, especially the combat scenes, which are spectacularly incompetent and impossible to follow.

The franchise promised in the above trivia item never materialised, probably due to The Cloth being a worthless piece of shit, but Price and Khu have made numerous movies since such as The 13th Friday, Alien: Reign of Man and The Mummy Rebirth. There is no way they spent $4 million making The Cloth, so I suspect a 'Springtime For Hitler' type scam, which must still be working so good for them.

[Egyptian Feast]

I forgot to mention, there's a bit where Wisecrack Prick punches Eric Roberts in the head and I may be wrong, but it looks like they just took a shot of Eric looking to his right, CGI'd the fist making contact with his head and covered it up with really poor editing.

[Famous Mortimer]

You know Roberts would take a blow to the face if they asked him, too. Must have been a post-production change.

[Egyptian Feast]

I also think Danny Trejo's entire appearance was a post-production change, which might explain his name showing up after the director credit in the opening/closing titles presentation.

[ImmaculateClump]

just watched The Wizard of Oz for work. obviously you know it. still has a magic for me. that said the munchkin coroner implies quite the darkness in Munchkinland doesn't it?

He's fantastic!

"As Coroner, I must aver
I thoroughly examined her
And she's not only merely dead
She's really most sincerely dead"

Deep Red (1975) - After all the recommendations I know this isn't going to be a popular post, but I struggled with aspects of this.

Shiter, innit? I got my wrists slapped on here and another place for not feeling it.
Did you watch the remastered version as well? It's so baggy and goes on forever. We might have watched the wrong version, I think. I read that the people that made it were just reinserting all the cut bits they could find, not worrying if they might have been cut for a reason.

Spoiler alert

Did you see the killer in the reflection in the mirror at the start?

[close]

I remember thinking "Hmmm, I'm not sure I was supposed to notice that quite as fully as I did"

[zomgmouse]

Hara-kiri (aka Seppuku, Masaki Kobayashi, 1962) - classic Japanese movie that's an interrogation of notions of honour around the samurai tradition (and also by implication about honour and tradition in Japanese society more generally). One of those films where it's better to not know too much, as one of its pleasures is how the story slowly unfolds, going backwards and forwards to reveal more about the characters and situation. Tatsuya Nakadai (who's in a lot of films from that era from Kurosawa, Naruse, etc) is brilliant in the lead as an old, unemployed samurai; but it's brilliantly made and very well told. I've not seen any other of Kobayashi's films but he seems very highly regarded, so I'll have to investigate further. Hara-Kiri was apparently remade recently by Takashi Miike but I've not seen that.

This is really terrific, I quite enjoy Kobayashi although sometimes his films can be a bit difficult to get into due to their heavy oppressive atmosphere and dense information load - Samurai Rebellion for example. But Kwaidan is a breeze and also excellent to look at in its splendid colour.

[Egyptian Feast]

I remember thinking "Hmmm, I'm not sure I was supposed to notice that quite as fully as I did"

I didn't notice on first viewing, but when I rewound it back afterwards you could see it clearly. It's probably easier to spot since the film came out on DVD, but most people still miss it.Funnily enough there's a bit in the film I watched tonight where the killer is briefly unmasked and you clearly see his face for a second, but maybe not long enough to recognise him unless you've seen it before...

BTW, the 100 minute cut of Deep Red is the preferred version of many fans, though I'm used to the long version from the Redemption video.

Blood And Black Lace (1964)

A model is brutally murdered by a killer in a blank face mask outside the fashion house where she works. When Inspector Kier Starmer questions the employees everyone seems like they've got something to hide and only one model seems emotionally affected by the murder, but the discovery of the victim's diary grabs everyone's attention...

There's barely a single sympathetic character in Mario Bava's proto-giallo, but everyone and everything looks fucking amazing, especially fashion house owner Eva Bartok. The glorious title sequence is probably the highlight of the film for me, which really isn't a slight on the rest of it, a nasty but cleverly plotted thriller with a heart of coal. It's such a gorgeous two minutes of cinema I had to watch it again at the end. The Arrow blu-ray has an alternate US opening that is interesting enough in it's own right, but about a million times less cool.

The blank masked killer (who, it has to be said, is a right nasty cunt) in the dark coat, gloves and hat looks so great the clothing became the standard giallo uniform and the creepy mask was homaged by the killer in The Case Of The Bloody Iris, Madonna in Dick Tracy and err...me (on an album cover).

[Famous Mortimer]

Beach Babes From Beyond

Obviously rubbish, a Skinemax movie that has some jokes and stuff in it (but almost no plot). Might break a record for most relatives of more famous actors - there's Estevez (Joe), Stallone (Jackie), Swayze (Don) and Travolta (Joey). It's just missing one of the not-famous Mitchums for the full set.

If you can make it to 13 minutes, there's a genuinely brilliant surf/rock tune called "Moshin' On The Beach" by "Daughter Judy", who probably aren't the "Philly trans rage fuzz" duo of the same name (although they're pretty good too), and almost definitely aren't the Texas-based smooth jazz / modern covers "Daughter Judy Band".

SORT OF EDIT: A tiny bit more effort and I think I found them, and they're from Texas too. There's a 1986 music video (for a different song) on Youtube, although that's about it (there might even be a fourth Daughter Judy, from LA, but they might just be the same singer and a different band. Heck, she could be in the covers band above). 

Sorry. I realise this is of interest to no-one.

[zomgmouse]

A Night in Casablanca. One of the few Marx Brothers films I hadn't seen. Some nice bits of silliness and charm but it all doesn't quite match the energy of their heyday.

Specter of the Rose. Underseen noir directed by Ben Hecht, set in the ballet world, making it a sort of proto-The Red Shoes, complete with sassy Russian impresario and emotions running wild. Not really coherent at all but there's some terrific acting and dialogue.

"Ritual in Transfigured Time". Incredibly brilliant experimental short by Maya Deren. Really need to see more of her work.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Shiter, innit? I got my wrists slapped on here and another place for not feeling it.
Did you watch the remastered version as well? It's so baggy and goes on forever. We might have watched the wrong version, I think. I read that the people that made it were just reinserting all the cut bits they could find, not worrying if they might have been cut for a reason.

Yeah, it was the 127 minute version I saw, and I'm all but certain I'd have much preferred the 100 minute one, but even then I don't think it would have changed my dislike for Hemmings's character, not unless the cut all the sexist shite out.

Spoiler alert

Did you see the killer in the reflection in the mirror at the start?

[close]

I remember thinking "Hmmm, I'm not sure I was supposed to notice that quite as fully as I did"

I didn't, which I'm oddly glad about as it did mean I didn't guess the ending,

Spoiler alert

presuming it was the journalist behind the killings as only someone severely mentally ill would like Hemmings's character

[close]

.

The Cloth (2013)...

That was a fantastic review which made me laugh in a good few places. I'm not sure I'm going to subject myself to it as it does sound incredibly awful, but perhaps the next time I'm in the mood for something ridiculously bad I'll give it a go.

[dissolute ocelot]

The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, 2016) - as usual with Maddin's recent films, this is less a conventional feature than a play-around with film history and pastiche. But it interweaves its multiple stories into a kind of narrative, packed with weirdness and silliness (one segment is entitled SQUID THIEF and lasts about 15 seconds, although there's a nice pay-off later). It's a parody of 1920s and early 30s cinema, from romantic melodrama to early horror films, all lovingly recreated (apparently largely digitally). There are also damsels in distress, sapphic passion, brigands, evil insurance fraudsters, and a lot of references to Schleswig-Holstein and banana vampires.

Maddin's My Winnipeg is one of my favourite films, and The Saddest Music In The World is great too. I feel more recently he's not really interested in creating a full-length feature and just wants to mess around (this was apparently born out of various shorts he made). I'm doubtless missing out on a lot of film history references, but it's lots of fun even if it feels a bit trivial.

This is really terrific, I quite enjoy Kobayashi although sometimes his films can be a bit difficult to get into due to their heavy oppressive atmosphere and dense information load - Samurai Rebellion for example. But Kwaidan is a breeze and also excellent to look at in its splendid colour.

Thanks, I'll definitely try and see Kwaidan.

[phantom_power]

I saw Deep Red recently as well and enjoyed it. I think with Giallo films you sort of have to take the acting, misogyny and lack of coherence as a feature rather than a bug. It is more about the style, atmosphere and mystery

[greenman]

I saw Deep Red recently as well and enjoyed it. I think with Giallo films you sort of have to take the acting, misogyny and lack of coherence as a feature rather than a bug. It is more about the style, atmosphere and mystery

To be fair Deep Red whilst maybe dated now was quite progressive at the time with Hemmings generally being shown up by Daria Nicolodi.

Generally I'd favour the longer cut personally, does play up that stuff more and some of the extra scenes like the intro with the jazz band are very nicely done.

[Famous Mortimer]

Stunt Rock

Imagine you're legendary Australian stuntman Grant Page. You discuss doing something with equally legendary Australian director Brian Trenchard-Smith, but he's only got a few days free. You might decide it's not feasible, or you might decide to take 45 minutes or so of Page's rehearsal footage and scenes from movies that you could get the rights to, about 30 minutes of rock band Sorcery, with a stage show involving a fight between the devil and Merlin (footage which the Spinal Tap guys almost definitely saw before making their movie), film Page driving round LA flirting with a journalist, and then try and splice something together out of what you've got.

No plot, really, at all. Just an endless parade of the silliest 70s rock and Page's wildest stunts. There's about half an hour of the movie where Page and one of the actors on the show he's doing stunts for are sat on a staircase chatting, and it cuts to a full, unedited song from Sorcery, or more stunt footage, over and over. Not even an attempt at moving anything along.

I love it, of course. Makes "Crank" look lethargic. But then again, "Crank" had a plot.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Road To Singapore (1940) - Bing Crosby and Bob Hope are two sea faring types who do their best to never do a day's work in their lives, with the former on the run from his Dad who wants him to settle down and take over the family business. There's a few funny set pieces, Hope and Crosby have great chemistry and there's a couple of songs which are amusing enough, but the boy's preference of using their fists at the drop of a hat is overused, one part where they "Go native" to get free food at a feast has not aged well at all, plus the ending drags on for far too long and isn't that funny. 5.9/10

[Small Man Big Horse]

Melody Time (1948) - Another Disney anthology which contains seven different stories, I wasn't expecting to like this and only watched it as I'm close to the end of my project to watch every Disney animated cinema release. But surprisingly it's pretty fantastic, there's the odd weaker moment (the opening Winterland number, and the story of Johnny Appleseed is only quite fun) but the rest are really great, there's some innovative animation going on (especially in Trees and  Bumble Boogie), along with a couple of bits of impressive mixing of live action and animation (I groaned when Donald Duck turned up in Blame It On The Samba but it turned out to be one of my favourite segments by the end), and the oddly saucy Pecos Bill sees the lead character drink coyote milk straight from the creature's tit, kiss a horse,

Spoiler alert

and have his fiancé murdered

[close]

, and it's a combination that amused me a huge amount and which was a great way to end the film. 8.1/10

[Egyptian Feast]

Stunt Rock

Sold! Sounds great.

Melody Time (1948)

And another one to add to the list.

I think with Giallo films you sort of have to take the acting, misogyny and lack of coherence as a feature rather than a bug. It is more about the style, atmosphere and mystery

Totally agree. Many of the things that are 'wrong' with them add to the appeal.

One of my favourites, The Fifth Cord, is so incoherent I still don't really understand a lot of the story after numerous viewings, but it looks and sounds incredible - if you like interestingly stylised shots of architecture, this film is porn. Some of the others I like are much less classy and technically interesting, some pretty much are porn (with a perfunctory mystery), but there's a vibe about the films that makes even the bad ones very rewatchable.

Kill, Baby...Kill! (1966) Another Bava blu ray and again a joy to revisit. This is like a psychedelic Hammer movie with an intriguing mystery slowly unravelled, each new piece of information adding an extra chill to the spooky atmosphere. As usual, Bava works wonders with a miniscule budget. One scene is very reminscent of the climax to season 2 of Twin Peaks, so I'd bet Lynch is a fan.

That title, though. Perfectly acceptable for a Russ Meyer flick, but it really doesn't suit this gothic horror movie. The Italian title Operazione Paura (Operation Fear) isn't much better. The opening of the German version, included as an extra, oddly has a much better title sequence than the usual version (a static shot of an impaled woman's back), setting the atmosphere perfectly through panning shots of the cursed village and an evil child's legs descending stairs. Even then they manage to spoil it by calling the film The Dead Eyes Of Dr. Dracula, which has fuck-all to do with anything. I don't know what would be a suitable title for the movie, but nobody managed to give it one.

[steveh]

Stunt Rock

On the Dead End Drive In Blu-ray there's Trenchard-Smith's The Stuntmen documentary included as an extra. I'm surprised Page and (most of?) his colleagues ever made it past the 1970s.

[Small Man Big Horse]

And another one to add to the list.

I feel I need to add the caveat that I was in the mood for something old and simplistic, and it certainly delivered, but looking at the reviews it's been criticised by so many people online that perhaps it might be worth watching with low expectations.

Kill, Baby...Kill! (1966) Another Bava blu ray and again a joy to revisit. This is like a psychedelic Hammer movie with an intriguing mystery slowly unravelled, each new piece of information adding an extra chill to the spooky atmosphere. As usual, Bava works wonders with a miniscule budget. One scene is very reminscent of the climax to season 2 of Twin Peaks, so I'd bet Lynch is a fan.

The climax to season 2 of Twin Peaks is something I adore, and you make it sound really fantastic in general, so I'll definitely watch that soon

[Small Man Big Horse]

Cats and Dogs 3: Paws Unite (2020) - Well, I'd seen the other two in the trilogy so kind of had to see how it would all end - Would cats win, and dogs be fed in to an enormous incinerator? Or would dogs be the victor, and cats eek out their final days as sex slaves to our four legged friends? Or would it kind of ignore the other two films and just be some idiocy about a cockatoo who hates cats and dogs as they're the animals who always get chosen as pets, and so he teams up with a lizard to hack a wi-fi frequency and produce a signal that causes cats and dogs to fight, meaning humans will choose less popular animals to live with? Shockingly it is that last one, and it is of course it's a deeply daft movie, and the majority of people will understandably think it's absolutely awful. Not me though, due to my quite frankly bizarre affection for films with talking animals, and there's just enough stupidity here that I found myself laughing fairly regularly, including some nicely violent dog on lizard scenes, a cockatoo mucking about inside a robot dog, a rather chatty tarantula, plus there's a strangely stroppy anti-technology theme which even gives the film a vague value. There's also a subplot with the human owners of the pets falling for each other but that's rubbish, and I do recognise this is a quite poor film, but ah, I'd be lying if I didn't admit to quite enjoying it. 5.9/10

[Inspector Norse]

Get Out Jordan Peele's much-admired 2017 film about a young black guy who goes to visit his white girlfriend's family only it's pretty fucking obvious right from the start what's going on. There is a good film in here, because the setup and performances and production and direction are good, it's just the film really struggles to maintain any suspense when everyone except the main character knows exactly what is happening and what is going to happen to him. To an extent, at least: the film does in the end add an extra layer as

Spoiler alert

the black people are not just being hypnotised, they're also having old white people's brains implanted into their heads.

[close]

There was more I liked about the film than disliked, but it just never really found a good way to handle the obviousness of the plot and it's hard to escape the feeling that the universally strong reviews were more based on its themes than its cinematic quality.

Our Beloved Month of August Strange but affecting film from Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, which starts off as a kind of meandering documentary about life in a small rural town, all laidback talking heads, footage of local bands at carnivals and fairs, odd bits of local colour and so on, interspersed with deadpan scenes of the film crew essentially just lazing around enjoying life, until the producers show up and kick them up the arse a bit, prompting them to cast some of the local characters we've met in a fictionalised kissin' cousins romance, which becomes the second half of the film. Really liked this, it was full of life and colour and very original while recalling pretty much everything from Kusturica to Ming-Liang Tsai at different times.
Want to see more from the director - I've always felt that way since seeing just the poster for Tabu, his best-known film, which I still haven't managed to watch.

Army of the Dead Complete bilge, only got halfway through. Desperate try-hard hackery, a huge mess of second-hand stylistic tics, appalling dialogue and cardboard characters. The cast do their best but this just isn't for me. And I'm a person who recently sat through the film of Doom.

[Shit Good Nose]

One of my favourites, The Fifth Cord, is so incoherent I still don't really understand a lot of the story after numerous viewings, but it looks and sounds incredible - if you like interestingly stylised shots of architecture, this film is porn.

Probably the only giallo I really like on its own merits.  But then it doesn't really look like a giallo and doesn't really play like a giallo, plus peak Franco Nero so......

Some of the others I like are much less classy and technically interesting, some pretty much are porn

COUGH-Slaughter Hotel-COUGH

Get Out Jordan Peele's much-admired 2017 film about a young black guy who goes to visit his white girlfriend's family only it's pretty fucking obvious right from the start what's going on. There is a good film in here, because the setup and performances and production and direction are good, it's just the film really struggles to maintain any suspense when everyone except the main character knows exactly what is happening and what is going to happen to him. To an extent, at least: the film does in the end add an extra layer as

Spoiler alert

the black people are not just being hypnotised, they're also having old white people's brains implanted into their heads.

[close]

There was more I liked about the film than disliked, but it just never really found a good way to handle the obviousness of the plot and it's hard to escape the feeling that the universally strong reviews were more based on its themes than its cinematic quality.

I thought it was fine, but I did think it should have ended and immediately cut to black after

Spoiler alert

he got back in the car and his mate said "I TOLD you not to go in that house".

[close]

[Egyptian Feast]

COUGH-Slaughter Hotel-COUGH

Lol, that is a good one, despite the Richard Speck homage. I'm very fond of Rosalba Neri's nymphomaniac character and always sad that she had the bad luck to be written for the wrong type of Italian genre film.

[Famous Mortimer]

On the Dead End Drive In Blu-ray there's Trenchard-Smith's The Stuntmen documentary included as an extra. I'm surprised Page and (most of?) his colleagues ever made it past the 1970s.

Amazingly, still with us. I really need to buy that Dead-End Drive-In blu, because it's a fantastic movie. Also, I want to track down "Death Cheaters", another Page-starring-as-a-stuntman movie from the 70s.

Death Run
Homemade-ish British version of those post-apocalyptic movies that were popular at the time (1987). Kinda delightful! A young couple wake up from 25 years of cryogenic sleep - the mother hoped they'd sleep through the coming nuclear apocalypse, but they wake up to a world (read - a tent and a few fields) run by the Messiah, who's got a swastika on his lapel so you know he's a rum 'un.

The male lead is sort of useless, so the star ends up being a buff fellow prisoner, who's the guy you'll see if you look at the VHS cover. 69 minutes long so you've not got time to be bored, I give it an enthusiastic recommendation if you're in the mood.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Last night I watched the German film 23 about the hacker Karl Koch who hacked some systems and sold the info to the East. The people he was selling through were coke and speed dealers which combined with his obsession with the number 23 to make him have a bit of the old psychosis, although it wasn't entirely clear if he was typically a bit delusional anyway. Him and his hacking partner turned themselves in during an amnesty so escaped prosecution. One day he left work in his dinner break and never returned, his body was found burned near some remote woods, officially ruled a suicide, but the small area of grass was also considered too neat and small to be typical of self-immolation cases, he was 23.

[zomgmouse]

I feel more recently he's not really interested in creating a full-length feature and just wants to mess around (this was apparently born out of various shorts he made).

I feel like Maddin has always been flitting between shorts and features though.

[sevendaughters]

saw Naked in the cinema yesterday for the 50 years of Mike Leigh retrospective, a half-century that has been mixed (I really don't like Peterloo and couple of others, but I think his early telly - especially Nuts in May - is outstanding) but worth celebrating. I'd seen it long enough ago as to be another person entirely, so I didn't know how this would make me feel.

From the opening credits where Johnny is driving a pilfered car with a Middlesbrough FC air freshener dangling from the rear-view, I instinctively knew that I was going to love it. It's a strange thing; some films just cast a spell from the outset. They do something so ineffable that you make excuses for the morally awful acts its characters commit because you think you can see some element of the soul of the people or time or place or politics coming out of it.

People who hate this film for whatever reason - I get it - it is squalid and populated with a real horror of exploitation and broken communication. It very well could trigger some terrible memories and I'm not going to mess with those feelings. It does for me too.

It's just that I feel what it is trying to say completely justifies the means. I take this, like presumably many do, to be a post-Thatcherism critique. The landlord is quite on the nose (I have prejudices that I don't mind being indulged, here was one) but Johnny is just the right age to have witnessed the full effects of Thatcherism on his family and how that trauma gets inflicted on him, so he's going to pass it onward ad infinitum. Naked gives you much less exposition and backstory than most would want, but it drips it out for you to piece together, should you wish [insert platitude about how they could never make this now].

The real layer of strength of Naked is the attempt to show how women are used as a focal point for displaced male disappointment and rage; using this feminist angle strengthens the anti-Thatcher rhetoric (a woman who is bad for women) whilst not letting anyone off the hook just because they've been traumatised or sidelined. Maybe the slightly heroic ending for Johnny paired with the semi-tragic exit for Sophie undercuts this a little. But there's always something in a text fighting against its central meanings.

Oh I've gone on a bit here. Should have just said something about a character David Thewlis played in a franchise film many years later and have done with it.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Found that review of Naked interesting. I don't know if I completely understand what you mean about the way it ends for Johnny and Sophie undercutting the main ideas. I watched it again two months ago after reading some discussion of it on here and was going to bring up the plot description on wikipedia but have just seen that it was edited last month from:

In a Manchester alley, Johnny Fletcher has violent sex with a woman.

to

In a Manchester alley, Johnny Fletcher rapes a woman.

When watching the film I was wondering how much of Johnny's behaviour Louise had a clear idea about from her relationship with him and from her observation of him with other women. And if she would have thought any differently of him if she was aware of everything.

[sevendaughters]

I guess I think the ending has a slighty Romantic quality; he walks proudly toward us, onward to doom, a slight victory in pocketing £300 and traumatising three women and getting away with it - while Sophie just seems absolutely ruined by her experiences and leaves with her back to us, holding a bookend of the letter S, no real sense of her onward trajectory other than to say probably continuing to be exploited and in a way we're complicit by making hero of one of her exploiters...idk...it's a complex piece, I am just riffing here!